Khoury Levit Fong shared with us their proposal for the GLOW/SHIFTboston Copley Square Competition. Their concept consists of an urban room, and hanging in the middle of it is a great chandelier. Dewdrop-shaped globes hang from a funicular mesh support, each illuminated by a wick-like row of low-energy addressable LEDs. It is light which is given weight and pulls down upon its supports to produce an inverted dome of scintillating light. Through the middle, the oculus at the center, the unobstructed sky is visible again. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN), with Crosby Schlessinger Smallridge (CSS) of Boston, were recently announced as the recipients of the biennial Tucker Design Award for 2012 for their North End Parks in Boston, MA. First presented in 1977, the award is a nationally recognized architectural design award in both the building and landscape industries and honors those whose work demonstrates excellence in concept, design, construction and use of natural stone. More information on the awards after the break.

New York-based architectural photographer Paul Clemence has shared with us recent images and his thoughts on Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s new student residence hall that is being constructed in downtown Boston. The 21-story, $61 million building is planned for completion this year. Boston is not particularly known as a destination for trendy, contemporary architecture; but some new buildings are beginning to change that perception. From Diller Scofidio Renfro’s Institute of Contemporary Art to Norman Foster’s new wing at The Museum of Fine Arts to the recently completed Renzo Piano addition to the beloved Gardner Museum, the city’s urbanscape is getting a much needed updating. And now, a soon to be finished bold new project by the firm ADD Inc is bringing a colorful twist to the mix. They are the designers behind the new MassArt Students Residence Hall. Continue reading for more.

Manuel Aires Mateus of Aires Mateus e Associados will be giving a lecture at MIT featuring ‘Latest Works’. The projects of Aires Mateus e Associados are characterised by materiality, mass and an essential muteness or quietness. The Paulo Gomes Archeological Center, Casa Areia and Furnas Monitoring and Investigation Centre are perhaps the most elemental and representative of their projects, seeming to draw power from the connection or contrast with nature. Situated at the archaeological site of Crasto Lofts, the Paulo Gomes Archeological Center features an exhibition area defined as the liminal space between a concrete and glass skin and the exposed cliff side. (Australian Institute of Architects).The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place Thursday, May 3rd at 6:30pm at MIT Building 10, room 250. For more information, please visit here.

Alejandro Aravena, based in Santiago de Chile, will be giving a lecture at MIT on the theme of ‘Elemental Recent Projects: Monoliths and Trees’. After the 8.8 earthquake and tsunami that hit Chile in 2010, they have worked in the reconstruction by proposing a mitigation forest as the main infrastructural work, but also dealing with housing, public buildings, productive activities and transportation. In 2011 they were called to perform a similar redesign of an entire city in the Atacama desert, where the Chilean Copper Company, Codelco, commissioned them to intervene at the whole scale of Calama where they are proposing an oasis. They have been also working in different buildings like the Angelini Innovation Center in Chile and the Mirador del Diablo in Mexico where architecture has become rather monolithic. The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place Thursday, April 19th at 6:30pm at MIT Building 10, room 250. For more information, please visit here.

Janine Benyus, president of the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute in Missoula, MT, will be giving a lecture at MIT on the theme of ‘Evolved to Fit: Biomimicry in the Built Word’. Janine Benyus is a natural sciences writer, innovation consultant, and author of six books, including her latest − Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. In Biomimicry, she names an emerging discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s designs and processes (e.g., solar cells that mimic leaves, agriculture that models a prairie, businesses that run like redwood forests). The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place Thursday, April 5th at 6:30pm at MIT Building 10, room 250. For more information, please visit here.

Studio Ö shared with us their first prize design, Room for Prayer, a mosque and cultural center as an extension for the Islamic Center of New England, Massachusetts. The proposed volume is closed to the outside and opens up on the inside. The intricate pattern of concrete facade works with shifting planes, creating shadow effects and an elegant and playful expression. More images and architects’ description after the break.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture + Planning will showcase the architecture of The Freelon Group in an art exhibition opening February 15th at the Wolk Gallery at MIT. The exhibit, which runs through April 13th, includes ten projects designed by the Freelon Group, plus a table from the furniture collection designed by founder Philip Freelon. Featured projects include museums, university buildings, libraries and an airport parking structure (we’ve published a few you can see here. And don’t miss our interview with Philip Freelon). More information on the event after the break.

The Hinterland Urbanisms Symposium, curated by Felipe Correa of Somatic Collaborative, Assistant Professor of Urban Design and Ana Maria Duran, Loeb Fellow ’11, looks at the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) as a point of departure for an ample discussion regarding the diverse models of urbanism that emerge at the intersection of resource extraction and regional integration projects (primarily through mobility corridors). The symposium takes place October 7th and 8th at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. More information on the event after the break.

Boston Society of Architects (BSA) recently launched their lecture series which opens up on September 21st with Jeremiah Eck, FAIA as he considers a simple way to infuse sustainability and light in homes; Barnaby Evans does something similar for cities while Chee Pearlman enlists design for the betterment of humanity and Audrey O’Hagan, AIA looks boldly toward the future of the profession. All free BSA lectures take place at 6:00 pm at the BSA Space multimedia room (290 Congress Street, Boston). More information on the series after the break.

Opening in 2012, the $118 million steel, glass, and copper-clad expansion to Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by Renzo Piano Building Workshop will more than double the size of the current facility. Included in the project are a new entrance, music hall, gallery space, and other amenities for an institution that has remained largely unaltered since opening in 1903.

The International Living Future Institute launched the Living City Design Competition in 2010, seeking designs for our cities in the year 2035.map-lab’s submission was ResilienCity. ResilienCity seeks to set the vision for the future of Boston’s Innovation District, a new neighborhood built on grey field and brownfield sites that will provide residences and workplaces for over 300,000 people. We have reached the tipping point where we need to think of the whole, not the self. We have arrived at a time when we need to stop behaving selfishly and begin to explore how we can all come together as a community to create environments that are culturally enriching, healthier, and equitable. We come back to nature to do this. Additional images of map-lab’s submission and a continuing narrative can be seen after the break.

Fascinated with the theory of camouflage and interested in how, as a design concept, it could result in the transformation of space, MODU changed the recognizable figure of a barge in a city to an interactive atmospheric phenomenon they titled, ‘Lighter Than Air’. This proposal, which was for “The Barge” competition organized by SHIFTBoston, won first place and will be coming to the Fort Point Channel in Boston in September 2012. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Boston based research and design firm, PRAUD, shared with us the West End Museum which is a community-based museum in Boston dedicated to documenting the history of the West End of Boston. The museum especially captures the immigrant era which dates approximately from 1880 to the West Ends destruction by eminent domain in 1958. More images and architects’ description after the break.

As a part of MIT’s 150th anniversary celebration, a student competition was held for a installation to become part of the festivities. Yushiro Okamoto‘s winning proposal, ICEWALL, has recently been completed and has been submitted to share with us here at ArchDaily. Follow after the break to browse through a large collection of photographs of the project.